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Simon Yates wins stage 9 in Maglia Rosa

25-year-old Simon Yates of Team Mitchelton-SCOTT has won stage 9 of the Giro d'Italia in the Magglia Rosa. The race leader crossed the line ahead of Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) and teammate Esteban Chaves. With a time gap to their other rivals, Yates now leads the Giro by 32 seconds to Chaves who moves up into second overall and 38 seconds to Tom Dumoulin (Team Sunweb) who drops to third.

Happy with the break:

Fourteen riders rode off the front as the flag dropped for the 225km stage and with Gianluca Brambilla (Trek Segafredo) the closest threat on the general classification at six-minutes 40seconds down, Mitchelton-SCOTT let them ride out to a sizable advantage.

Happy to let them contest the stage, Svein Tuft and Sam Bewley rode tempo with the margin hovering between seven and eight minutes.

Team effort:

After hours on the front, Astana then took up the chase inside the last 40km and brought the stage victory back into contention. With 20km to go Mitchelton-SCOTT moved back to the front with Roman Kreuziger before Jack Haig took the reins and put in another mammoth effort to end the day of the final surviving breakaway riders before peeling off and leaving the rest up to his leaders with less than three kilometres remaining.

Pink beauty:

It was Giulio Ciccone (Bardiani-CSF) and Domenico Pozzovivo (Bahrain-Merida) who were the most active in the final two kilometers, but they were chased repeatedly by Pinot with Yates and Chaves on his wheel.

Timing his run to perfection, Yates left it to the final 100m to launch from the wheel and come around for a prestigious victory in the pink jersey.